[mapserver-users] The right tool for the job

[Colin Wetherbee]

Milo van der Linden wrote:
> Colin Wetherbee schreef:
>> Essentially, I'd like a map of the world,
> You can connect to other WMS services such as Demis to display a
> world map, either from a server or from a client (using for instance
> openlayers)

Demis looks like it could do what I want, in terms of displaying a world
map and so forth, but at 950 EUR, it's beyond my budget at the moment.

I'll poke around for other WMS-like applications, though.  Thanks for 
the suggestion.

>> and I'd like to be able to highlight certain airports and draw 
>> different types of lines between them, based on dynamic input from
>> the user through the Perl application.
> You can use user variables to connect to the mapfile (search for 
> "substitute variables" on the mapserver website. I would like to hand
>  you the link, but I cannot connect to http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu
> at the moment)

Thanks.  I'll check this out.

>> At peak usage, I suspect at least 75 maps would need to be
>> generated per second, with an average of 30-40 data points and
>> various amounts of connecting lines between them per map.
> Make sure the server is capable of this with regards to bandwidth, 
> memory and processor capacity. This is in essence not a problem for 
> mapserv.

I just want to be sure that, with high-end but still commodity hardware, 
I'll be able to render enough maps per second to make this worthwhile.

>> Is this the sort of thing MapServer is good at doing?  I've read
>> some of the web site, and really, I can't make heads or tails of
>> quite a bit of it, especially with respect to Perl.
> I think it is, but it is best to combine it with a strong AJAX viewer
> to get the best dynamic user experience and taking the most (views
> and queries) out of postGIS.

Indeed.  I'd eventually like to implement my maps in Flash on a rotating 
globe, but that's down the road a bit for now.

Colin